“I know enough.”
Darnell moved toward Lenora, desperation beginning to show through his anger.
“Lenora, listen to me.”
“No.”
It was not loud. It did not need to be.
His face twisted. “You hid this from me.”
Lenora almost laughed, but there was no humor in her.
“I didn’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t expect anything from you anymore.”
The sentence hurt her more than it hurt him. For years, expectation had been the thread that kept her tied to him. She expected him to remember the man he pretended to be when they met. She expected him to apologize after the first cruel comment, then the tenth, then the hundredth. She expected marriage to mean there was some door back to tenderness if only she found the right words, cooked the right meal, dressed the right way, kept quiet at the right time.
